Lectures

My alma mater just emailed me about a couple of lecture series they're running:

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Why not retain your intellectual faculties at the white-heat they enjoyed while you were at Keele!

WORLD AFFAIRS LECTURE SERIES

The World Affairs Group has drawn up an extremely stimulating series of lectures and speakers for their 2006-2007 programme. All Lectures start at 7.30 p.m. in the Westminster Theatre, Chancellor’s Building). Please note course fee below.

September 28th	Prof Paul Rogers	Bradford University	“A War Too Far”
October 5th	Prof D Stevenson	L.S.E.	War and Peace in the 20th Century
October 12th	Dr C Spence	Director Middle East Studies Chatham House	“Iran”
October 19th	Dr D Nussbuam	Transparency International Berlin	World Wide Corruption!
October 26th	Sir Digby Jones	Chief Ext C.B.I.	Globalisation – Threat or Opportunity?
November 2nd	Lembit Öpik	Lib Dem MP	Northern Ireland
November 9th	Anas Altikriti	Moslem Council	“Iraq” – a case point of Western Moral and Ethical Decline
November 16th	Bruce Kent	Vice President, Nuclear Disarmament	Getting rid of Nuclear Weapons and War
November 23rd	Dr G Watts	Science and Medical Author BBC Broadcaster	Mice, Molecules, Men. Moral Ethics and Biological Medicine
November 30th	Prof Alex Danchev	Nottingham University	Terror and Torture
December 7th	Prof M Temple	Staffordshire University	Politics and the Media
December 14th	Dr Tim Jones	Innovara, London and Amsterdam	The World in 2026!
December 21st	Lindsay Whitehouse	Deputy Governor Werrington Young Offenders’ Institute	Dealing with Young Offenders
January 4th	Annual Dinner	Keele Hall	Sir Stephen Lander – Director General Serious Crime Squad; Former Head MI5
January 11th	Werner Sabiers	German Journalist	Germany Today
January 18th	Prof L Scott	Aberystwyth University	Intelligence in Crisis from Sept 11 to Iraq!
January 25th	Dr S McKenzie	Keele University	Looting the World’s Culture Heritage
February 1st	Dr M Breen Smyth	Aberystwyth University	Reconstruction – Northern Ireland, South Africa and the Middle East
February 8th	Dr P Bou-Habib	Essex University	Justice for the Old and Young
February 15th	Prof D Dorling	Sheffield University	The World as You Have Never Seen It Before
February 22nd	Dr M O’Neill	Loughborough University	Immigration
March 1st	Prof P Styles	Keele University	King Coal is Buried but is he Dead Yet?!
March 8th	Dr P Fysh	Nottingham Trent University	Racism in France
March 15th	Dr D Maxwell	Keele University	Zimbabwe
March 22nd	Prof N Wheeler	Aberystwyth University	Humanitarian Intervention
March 29th	Dr D Dunn	Keele University	Thinking about Peace
May 3rd	Lord Carlisle QC	House of Lords	Terrorism and Civil Liberties – Where Now and Next?
May 10th	Dr S Sharma	Keele University	India
May 17th	Prof M Dando	Bradford University	Biological Warfare

“There is
a lot of evil in mankind

And we
have to be constantly vigilant to combat it

But there
is a lot of good in mankind

And
properly nurtured it will always triumph!”

Gandhi

Course fee
£25. Pensioners £13. Unemployed and Students free. Please make cheques payable to “World
Affairs”.

Why not
try the first three lectures free of charge? This course is dedicated to the
principles of free political debate. You must, however, have the tolerance to
accept that others may hold opposite views! If you want further information,
please ring Owen Powell on 01782 534934.

INAUGURAL
LECTURE PROGRAMME

DATE	LECTURER	TITLE
Tuesday, 3 October 2006	Professor Matthias Klaes	An Introduction to Commerce in Five Aphorisms
Wednesday, 25 October 2006	Professor John Wearden	The Perception of Time
Thursday, 9 November 2006	Professor Steve Cropper	Playing a part: on organising and evaluating collaborative action
Tuesday, 5 December 2006	Professor Serguei Semenov	Imagine and Discover: medical Imaging
Tuesday, 16 January 2007	Professor Andy Dobson	Political Animals
Thursday, 1 February 2007	Professor Jo Laybourn-Parry	Antarctica – the edge of existence
Kh Mm Thursday, 22 February 2007	Professor Stephen Wilkinson	Choosing Children: the ethics of selective reproduction
Thursday, 8 March 2007	Professor Richard Hays	Education or workforce strategies? The precarious position of medical schools.
Tuesday, 27 March 2007	Professor Ronnie Lippens	Whither Critical Criminology?
Wednesday, 2 May 2007	Professor Chris Main	Does the Reign of Pain fall mainly in the Brain?
Tuesday, 15 May 2007	Professor Tom Scharf	The Extremes of Age: Challenging Poverty, Promoting Inclusion

ALL
INAUGURAL LECTURES COMMENCE AT 6.00 p.m. IN THE WESTMINSTER
THEATRE, CHANCELLOR’S BUILDING

Apologies
to those unable to enjoy these events due to
distance.

forever:
keele
John Easom
International Alumni Officer
Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG
Tel
00 44 (0)1782 583370 Fax 584422
Moved house or job? Don't forget to let the
Alumni Office know... www.keele.ac.uk/depts/uso/alumni

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The World Affiars doesn't look that interesting but some of the inaugural lectures do. If it weren't for the distance I'd seriously consider going.

Office suite I'd really like

I was just reading an article on Slashdot about the possibility of a version of Microsoft Office for Linux and it reminded me of something I've been thinking about, off and on, for some time. It first came up whilst I was trying to learn TeX, or rather the LaTeX implmentation of TeX. I got to thinking that what I would find really useful, at work at least, would be a wordprocessor that was entirely styles based and where if you edited a style the change would be automatically propagated to everywhere that style was used (a bit like how CSS is supposed to work, although the ability to 'lock' a document to the current set of styles would be useful although this could be achieved by exporting to PDF). A big problem I've found with styles in current word processors (MS Word, OpenOffice &c) is that if you chage a stle it very often will only change it for new uses of that style, existing text in that style will remain unchanged.

A lot of companies require that all documents be produced with a set set of fonts, sizes and colours to give a corporate standard. A styles based wordprocessor would allow them to create the required styles and provide them to all employees, probably along with document templates for standard corporate documentation. When the management decided they wanted to change the corporate style they could just update the style library and redistribute it, as each document was opened the changed styles would be applied. It would save a lot of hassle having to create the styles yourself and manually change each document when the corporate styles change.

I think that this would get us closer to the intention behind Tex of just getting on with writing the document and not fussing about the look of it. I suspect that it would also help make documents more accessible for people with disabilities as it would make them more readable by automated systems, similarly it would make documents more suited to automatic processing. Styles could be semantic in nature, rather then seeing a block of text which is defined as being "bold, 22pt, Arial Black, centred" the software would see one labelled "ChapterTitle".

Dentally Assaulted

A filling fell out of one of my teeth last week, taking most of the tooth with it. As I don't have a dentist I had to go to the Dental Hospital.

I called in advance and they the only way to get treatment is to show up at 07:30 to get a number then there'd be a minimum two hour wait and I'd get treated, first untruth. I showed up at 06:45 on Friday morning (I booked the day off work) and there was already a queue of 8 people. By the time they opened the doors at 07:40 there was a queue of about 30 people. After the pushing and shoving I was 12th in line and got number 12. I was then told to come back at 13:30 as they would only be treating 10 people that morning and 10 in the afternoon. So if you want treatment there get there for 06:30 and bring something to sit on (that folds up quickly into something that can be used as a weapon) and a book.

I hung around in town for a while, did a bit of shopping and drank far too much coffee.

At about 13:00 I went back to the hospital and took a seat in the ground floor waiting room, as instructed. After about 45 minutes they opened up reception and started to call people through. I noticed that a lot of the people they were calling through didn't have a number and hadn't been there at 07:40, which revealed the second untruth. You don't have to show up early and get a number, you can be referred or even make an apppointment if you've been treated there before.

After about 25 minutes my number was called and I went to the reception desk and gave my details (Name, address, full servicemedical history &c) then was sent to sit down in the waiting area again. Another 15 minutes passed and my name was called. I went into a side room which contained about half a dozen dentists chairs. I was dragged to one where a guy in his 40s (I guess a dentist) took my details including stuff like allegies (including the fact that I'm allergic to latex, i.e. what their examination gloves are made of) then looked in my mouth and confirmed that a large chunk of one of my molars had disapeared and the tooth would have to be pulled (the one positive thing about the dental hospital, they don't try to pad their income by 'saving' a tooth), I could have told them that at 07:40 that morning. I was sent to another waiting room, on the second floor this time.

About 15 minutes later I was called through and was seen by a student dentist who (based on his accent, body langauge and general manner) seemed to be from India, probably the Southern half and probably somewhere quite rural but with access to a large town or city (his English was excellent, better than many native speakers), probably Hindu or non-practicing Sikh (when you live and work in such a multi-ethnic environment as I do you learn to spot these things, I'm only mentioning the races to flesh out the story). He poked and prodded for a while and rattled some instruments around in my mouth, then he called over his supervisor to check his conclusions. His supervisor was a practicing Sikh who (from his turban, accent and body language) seemed to have either been born in the UK (probably London) or in Kenya and moved to the UK at an early age. The supervisor looked and prodded then confirmed what the dentist on the ground floor had said, better to have a secondthirdfourth (remember, I'd said from the get go what the problem was) diagnosis. They then sent me to the first floor to have an X-ray because they wanted to see where the roots went so they'd know if they would need to nick my gum.

I sat in another waiting room for a while then was subjected to a student X-ray tech (East African, I think) ramming his latex covered fingers down my throat (and wondering why I was choking) followed by his supervisor (Sutton Coldfied or Knowle) doing likewise with her fingers and bafflement as they tried to get the film in place. After I fought them off and finished retching I positioned the film (I was, after all, the one who knew for sure where the tooth in question was) and they took the shot. Usual delay for developing and I was looking at an X-ray of my tooth. I went back up to the second floor waiting room and waited.

Five minutes later (at least the waiting times were getting shorter) I was called back through to the treatment room where they told me they'd pull the tooth, they might need to nick my gum but it would be a small nick and they'd be able to sew it up no problems. I had a local aneasthetic (which hurt out of all proportion and tasted awful when it dripped on my tongue) and layed back, I sat up swilled and rinsed then layed back again. The student dentist snapped off the remainder of my tooth above the surface of the gum whilst asking his nurse what the various tools were for. He then called over his supervisor who looked at his work and said they'd have to drill out the rest of the tooth. Much rattling and drilling (interspersed with instructions to mount the burr the correct way around next time) they had removed all but one root and large chunks of the bone of my upper jaw. The supervisor explained that this root was a big one and curved, he also explained that they had to be careful. He then asked the student why they had to be careful. "There's a nerve behind it" the student guessed (wrong), "An artery" he tried again (wrong again). I thought about giving the right answer but the supervisor seemed determined to make this a learnig moment so I lay quietly bleeding into my mouth from the thumping great hole in my gum. Eventually (after the student had worked is way through every organ, bone, nerve, blood vessel and unidentifiable purple wibbly thing known to mankind (and a few known only to grey aliens from Proxima Centauri) except the right one) the supervisor relented and pointed out my sinus cavity, which if pierced would be a bad thing. Realisation dawned. More drilling and burring then some pulling and the root was out along with more hunks of upper jaw. The supervisor put a couple of stiches in then got the student to out some more in. After stiching my gum to my inner cheek then lower lip (also sewing part of my lips together) he eventually got a few stiches where they were supposed to be. I was sent on my way with an instruction to avoid heavy exercise (so not a problem) and to take Neurophen for the pain, not anything with Asprin in as that slows clotting, preferably before the aneasthetic wore off. By the time I got to a chemists (the Dental hospital is right in the jamedoulas so it was a bit of a hike) to buy some Neurophen the anaesthetic had worn off. I bought the pills and some water to take them with then took them and went to the bus stop.

4 days later and I'm still in pain, my gum is still swollen (although less so than it was this morning).

I realise that the dental hospital is used to dealing with indigents, but that's no excuse for poor service and substandard care.

Creating a positive working environment

I attended a short course on Monday on how to create a positive working environment and stress busting. Very interesting. The trainer handed out a printout of a webpage entitled "How to Create a Positive Work Atmosphere". The signs of a negative work environment seems like a spot on description of where I work right now.

Lib Dems in Birmingham

In the ward I live in (South Yardley, Cllr Hemming is one of my councillors), or at least the part of the ward I live in (Greet), the Lib Dems have been campaigning on a slogan of "Lib Dem or BNP: It's a two horse race". Reading further into their election material they seem to be saying that the only way to keep the BNP out is to vote Lib Dem. Thing is, I've lived in or near to this ward most of my life. I've never seen anything to suggest that the fascists had any real chance of winning. I can't help but wonder if this is some sort of scare tactice to terrify the voters into supporting the Lib Dems, Greet is largely ethnically Pakistani Muslims with a mix of other South Asians.

Personally I'm going to vote Labour ont he grounds that of the Birmingham councillors I've met the only ones I've found to be remotely likable have been Labour.

Politics

Interesting view on the UK 2005 elections.

The site looks at politics not just as a one dimensional line from left to right but as a 2 dimentional graph with left and right applying to just economic/social ideas (taxation, welfare, social security) whilst adding a perpendicular dimension looking at the degree of authoritarianism a person or group exhibits (regulation).

I think I agree in principle with what they're saying, and their discussion around the positions of the labour and conservative parties seems pretty accurate, I don't agree with their assessment of the BNP. From what I've seen and read the BNP are economically more right wing than that, maybe not as much so as the Tories but certainly more so than the Lib Dems. They are also much more authoritarian.

There's a quiz you can take to see where you fit on the scales. I came out on the far left just below middle line.

It would be interesting to see where some of our elected officials come. I've met some Lib Dem councillors who are very authoritarian and a couple of Tories who are socially quite liberal. I had one meeting with a Lib Dem councillor and a Tory councillor at the end of which all the attendees thought each of them was a member of the other's party.

Job Offers

Just had a call from a recruitment consultancy offering me an interview with Barclay's bank for a DBA role looking after their share trading systems. Unfortunately it was a production support only role (aka DataBase Baby Sitting), which would bore me silly, so I had to turn it down.

The consultant said he'd got my CV off monster.co.uk. I only put my CV up there last Thursday and this is the third recruitment consultant to phone me having seen it there.

Fortunately I'm in the position right now where I have a job I can stand so I can afford to be picky about which jobs I go for, unfortunately all the jobs that seem to be coming through are ones that I either couldn't do (I can't drive so any jobs I can't access via public transport are out) or wouldn't want to do (e.g. the Barclay's one above).

Linked-In

Anyone else use Linked-In?

It's kinda a social networking type of site but business/job seeking oriented. The idea being that you might not know anyone who has the skills you need for a job you have on offer or who can offer a job that would suit your skills but someone that you know might know someone or someone you know might know someone who knows someone &c. Of course it does rely on you actually knowing people and knowing that they have a profile on Linked-In.

My profile is at :http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/131/a3b

A few people I know are on there but it just seems so crass to invite someone to link to you.

Has anyone else noticed the utter lack of police around Birmingham city centre recently?

Following an event last night (recounted below) I've contacted my MP, via WrtiteToThem.com about it:

Sir,

I have of late become concerned about the apparent reduction in the presence of police officers 'on the ground' in Birmingham City Centre. Until quite recently uniformed officers (both regular police and 'Community Support Officers') along with a mobile CCTV van were a common sight around the city centre, both daytime and late in the evening. Now, aside from special events and the occasional CSO during the day, they are not to be seen. I am aware that there are many fixed CCTV cameras around the area, but these seem to provide little if any deterrant and certainly are unable to provide anything by way of direct assistance to members of the public who are victims of crime. Plus many are privately owned and not monitored out of business hours.

This raises a number of concerns for public safety.

For example, last night I was entering the top end of New Street, from Victoria Square, a little after 10pm, having just taken my sister and her two children to see "The Wizard of Oz" at the Rep Theatre. Two black (African or West Indian) men, appearing to be in their late teens or twenties, were walking in the opposite direction. As they past us one started to shout at me calling me a "F**king Jew" (please excuse the use of profanity, I just want to ensure that you appreciate the tone of his speech) and other antisemitic statements (I am not Jewish but, presumably because I have a full beard and tend to wear black, occasionally some people assume that I am). Up until this point none of us had even looked at either of them, although obviously his statements at that point drew our attention. His companion then started walking towards me and threatened to "F**k [me] up good." (again, I appologise for repeating his use of profanity). Before I could react the one who had made the initial statements called him off and they hurried away.

I realise that nothing there would have resulted in any police officer wittnessing the scene to have arrested either of them and that if they were arrested the CPS would have declined to prosecute, deeming threats of violence against an individual to be too trivial to take to court. Which, along with the fact that they would be long gone before any police officers might show up, is why I did not call the police as soon as they were out of sight and earshot. I do, however, believe that if there had been a visible police presence the odds are that the event would not have happened and they would have just walked past.

Pleae bear in mind here that we're not talking about something that happened in some rarely travelled back street. We're talking about something that happened in a major thoroughfare of Birmingham City Centre, a principle route from the entertainment areas of Centenary Square and Broad Street to New Street station and the bus stops and taxi ranks around Corporation Street. There is a low but continuous flow of people through that area at that time of the evening.

I know that in the long term issues around urban poverty and the lack of positive male role models for boys and young men (the dress of the man who threatened me seemed to be straight out of a "50-Cent" video or one of the recent "Grand Theft Auto" console games) need to be resolved to reduce such occurances. I do feel that in the short term a visible police presence around the city centre would go a long way to breaking the cycle of violent behaviour.

Your's most faithfully,




Stephen Booth

NB where I have 'sanitised' words with ** here (to avoid tripping concent scanners) I left them unammended in the origial letter.

Linux for Libraries

For some months, as part of the Open Source Academy, a small team in Birmingham City Council's Business Solutions and IT section have been investigating the use of Linux, as an alternative to Microsoft Windows, in the Libraries Service. The project is currently in the live pilot stage.

Tommorow night, Thursday 20th, the first public report on the project will be delivered to the South Birmingham Linux Users Group at Birmingham University. The meeting is open to anyone so, if you're interested and can get there feel free to show up. The venue is on the train station side of the campus.

I'm not ignoring you honey

A study at Sheffield university discovered that men have greater difficulty understanding women's speech than other men's. It seems that the cause is that whilst men's speech is processed (by the listener) in the speech parts of the brain, women's speech is processed by the areas of the brain normally responsible for music.

How this might be used to improve intergender communication is left as an exercise for the reader.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

According to the BBC the rate of rise of house prices has dropped to 5.4%.

Oh. How. Terrible.

How? Will? Home? Owners? Ever? Survive?

Come on! Average house price rise in 2004 was 17%. How much did the average salary go up by? 2%, if that?

[This entry was previously published on Livejournal_uk. The comments recieved do give an interesting insight into how much of an issue the lack of affordable housing is is.]

Issue de jour

It's just been on the BBC news that despite many hospitals claiming shortages of doctors there is infact a glut of junior doctors. It's just that few hospitals will offer them the posts with training that they need to progress.

There is a plan to offer an alternate path, we'll have to see how that works out.

Birmingham Metroblog a week old

The Birmingham Metroblog is now a week old and seems to be going strong. Hopefully we'll be able to keep up the momentum and maybe attract some more writers.

I've only managed 5 entries so far. One giving an over view of the Birmingham Wheel, one introducing the Council House Clock (aka Big Brum), the three attempts at Op-Ed pieces about the councils plans for the Central Library, the electronic notice boards in the bus stops finally being put to use on the 11 route and, today, an entry dealing with the new technology and access routes to services the city council have introduced and a quick look to the future.

Birmingham Metroblog Goes Live

The Birmingham Metroblog has gone live.

We actually started posting entries a couple of days ago but the organisers asked us not to direct people to the blog prior to the official go live. They wanted there to be a couple of days of entries for people to see when the blog went live.

Housing and Civic pride

Whilst searching for something else I came accross this very interesting, and above all largely correct, article on housing and house prices. I don't really agree with the wholesale ripping down of our towns and cities to rebuild them in a more civic light, but I do think that we need to build a lot more housing, especially social housing owned and managed by the local town/city councils and housing associations who have a mandate to provide affordable housing to those on low wages.

Ripping out the neo-slums that have arisen in the last century and demolishing the Big Blue Turd would be an excellent idea. Affordable housing (not Luxury apartments that mostly stand empty) and commerical areas where you can shop and be entertained on a reasonable budget would seem to be what is needed.

More on Corporate Blogging

I was sent a link to a report on Corporate Blogging. I've only had a chance to read a few pages so far (this entry is as much so I'll be able to find the lnk when I get home), looks fairly bland.

The report says it's fine to link to so long as you also linkl to the site's main page so here's the link.

I'll write more when I've read the rest of the article if I can be bothered.

We're all journalists now

Today's Grauniad had an article about New Media and citizen reporting today in the G2 section. It was mostly about how the bomb attack last week in London seems to have been a tipping point in the media due to the way most of the reporting came not from professional journalists but from members of the public using their mobile phones to take and send in photos and video. Very often these pictures would be on the TV news within minutes of being shot.

LiveJournal got a name check (along with a coment from 'The site administrator') in a section of the article about the rise of blogs. Blogspot wasn't mentioned.

This weekend

I've been installing Ubuntu 5.04 on one of my PCs (a P II 400MHz with 384Mb RAM which previously has SuSE 8.1 installed).

The install ran pretty smoothly, the hardware is pretty vanilla. Sound isn't working, it doesn't report any errors and seems to try to play the sound but nothing comes out of the speakers. That said, I've never managed to install any distro on any PC and have the sound work without a lot of fiddling and downloading of additional drivers.

I am finding that I'm having problems in that I'm having to fight the operating system to get it to do what I want rather than what it thinks I want.

I can access shared drives on my Windows XP boxes through the file browser app by entering the URI in the address box (i.e. smb://machine/drive) but it won't mount them (it doesn't have smbmount and the package manager doesn't list it as being in any of the available packages, I have all the Samba packages installed). Also whilst the installer found the second hard drive (and it would partition and format the drive) it won't let me create or mount any file systems on it. The box has a 6.2Gb drive (IDE master) and a 10.2Gb drive (IDE slave). It installed on the 10.2Gb drive to give me about 9.6Gb of file system space plus about 500Mb of swap.

The struggles will continue.

Birmingham MetroBlog

Sadly it looks like there's a shortage of people signing up to write for the Birmingham Metroblog, that or the people running the site are getting behind in checking/adding people. They said we need at least 10 contributors before we can get started.

You can apply here if you think you've got what it takes.

Not in Islam's name

Interesting article about most Muslim's fears following Al'Queda attacks.

I can't say I agree with everything in the article (I don't think that a withdrawal from Palestine will reduce the threat from Al'Queda one bit and it's clear from their actions elsewhere in the world that Al'Queda were transnational well before 9/11 and the resulting action in Afgahnistan) but most of it does seem to fit in with comments from my Muslim co-workers.

Here's some stuff about the history of Al'Queda

MetroBlogging

One of my friends on LiveJournal pointed out this too me. Apparently what it's about is blogs centred around cities (or at least geographucal locations) with reports from people who live there. They're trying to drum up some more contributors for the Birmingham (England) blog.

There is a LiveJournal community blog for Birmingham, but I don't think that's what they're going for here.

Gmail Ads

I use Gmail for most of my email and, as you may be aware, when you read mail in Gmail you get a few relevant text ads off to one side of the page, that's how the service is funded. Whilst they're easy to ignore occasionally one does catch my eye or I deliberately check them just to see what ads Google has come up with relevant to that mail.

Today I got a news mail about OSHA and US congress being held accountable for the deaths of 4 workers at the Toledo I-280 bridge.

The two ads Google chose to show me were:

Hasta La Vista Arnie in 2006.
Mark Warner for President 2008.

Just struck me as interesting.

So, who is this Mark Warner person?

UNISON and Climate Change

For the past week (last Saturday to today, inlcuding travelling) ) I'm been at UNISON conference (2 days at Local Governement Service group then 4 days at National). Whilst I was there I drafted an article on climate change for the West Midlands region news letter, an article calling for a motion on climate change to be prioritised and passed. The article didn't get published (largely because it's crap and the fact that a much better one on the same subject was also submitted). I'm planning on rewriting it, to improve it and to take account of the fact that the motion was prioritised and passed, but for now it's below:

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THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW - will you be going to work on a snowplough?
(Stephen Booth, Birmingham Branch)

Climate change, we've all heard about it. Some of us first heard about it on Blue Peter back in the 1970s and 80s, others more recently on the news or in the publicity relating to films such as "The day after tomorrow", some even heard about it in 1954 when an observatory in Hawaii first started to collect world temperature on a regular basis. Whilst many of us will also recall being told that global warming was a myth, all authorities not funded by the multinational oil companies now agree that it is happening, anyone who has looked out of a window in the last decade can see for them selves that the climate has changed. Even the US National Academy of Science, a body currently funded by the Bush government, are talking about it.

Whilst estimates on how much the global average temperature will rise by 2100 (a year that some of the younger delegates could realistically expect to see, a year that many of the children currently sitting in the SECC crèche could certainly expect to see), it is agreed that it will rise by between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius. To put that in context, the last time the worldwide average temperature rose by 6 degrees 95% of the species on the globe went extinct.

Researchers drilling cores from the Greenland and Antarctic have found conclusive proof that rises in global temperature always go hand in hand with rises in atmospheric carbon, not just once or twice but dozens of times in samples they have so far extracted. The evidence points to the fact that whilst we're looking at a change over a very long period it is very probable that most of the change will occur over a much shorter period, a few years at most. It could start in 50 years times, it could start in 20 years time, it could have started yesterday, we don't know. Suddenly an issue that we thought our children and grandchildren might have to face becomes one that we ourselves will probably have to face!

So, what can we do? Many politicians would have you turning turning off your TV over night rather than leave it on standby and switch to low energy light bulbs. Undoubtedly that will help, I reduced my electricity bill by a bout 25% through such measures, but that would just remove a pebble or two from the landslide of climate change. Massive changes are needed to solve this problem, massive changes but ones that will have little effect on our standard of living although they will result in many more public sector jobs. Hmmmm, more public sector jobs. Well, we're UNISON, we like that.

About a third of carbon being put into the atmosphere is from transport, largely private cars and airplanes. Improvements in public transport, both road and rail, are necessary so that where ever you are and where ever you need to go there is a clean, safe, coordinated and integrated system to get you there whether you're traveling at 8am on Monday to work, 3am on Sunday to get home from a club or half way around the world to a conference or demo. Public transport means public jobs to build and maintain the infrastructure, build and maintain the vehicles, staff the stations and drive the vehicles.

Much of the rest of the carbon released is due to wasted heat from homes and businesses. The solution here is a widespread and comprehensive public works scheme to insulate not just new build houses but also to refit older houses to insulate them and reduce drafts (something which my landlord resolutely refuses to do, how about yours?).

Where can you go from here? Raise this issue at your branch, get it on the agenda and get them to inform the membership. Prioritise Motion 92, if you don't, and Bournemouth and Brighton disappear under the sea, we might have to meet in Scotland every year. And I'm talking Ben Nevis, not Glasgow.

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PostScript: It would appear that John Hemming, MP (Yardley, LibDem), has had some direct experience of climate change. we can but hope that he and his fellows in the chamber can take positive action to halt the changes and reduce carbon emmissions.

PostPostScript: One very worrying thing I've heard is that a number of multinational companies have been meeting recently to discuss climate change, not to discuss how to stop or at least slow the changes but rather to work out how to survive and even profit from the changes. For example insurance companies have, apparently, been co-ordinating efforts to remove flood and extreme weather cover from their policies as such events are becoming common and resulting in payouts.

It seems that what we may be looking at is much of northern Europe, Asia and America being frigid beneath an ice sheet (similarly for similar lattitudes in the southern hemisphere) whilst equatorial regions are parched. The fertile zone is due to be reduced to a narrow band bordered by fire and ice.

Lin Homer quits

It was announced in yesterday's Evening Mail that Lin Homer, Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council, has decided to quit her post and join the Home Office to deal with Asylum Seekers. Ms Homer joined the council after a long search for a new chief exec following the exit of Sir Michael Lyons. She has been in the firing line on a number problems such as reports of poor performance in the city's Social Care and Health department and the recent postal vote issues. When Ms Homer joined the council her coming was heralded by fears generated by her record of outsourcing public services.

Councillor John Hemming (now John Hemming, MP) was reported as pleased for Ms Homer and wished her well in her new post.

Careful who you link to

Just found this (WARNING: page contains banner ads which include partial nudity and mild sexual content) whilst checking out referers to some of my web pages (someone who linked to one of my pages also linked to this article). Basically the US congress seems to have passed a regulation that adult content sites that feature content from or link to other such sites must ensure that models on those sites are of legal age.

Whilst there may be issues around the practicalities of this (e.g. what if a linked site features a new model without notifying sites that link to them, what constitutes a link (would an aggregated RSS feed count as a link) &c) the principle does seem reasonable. To take an analogy, if I own a bar and one of the staff knowingly serves an underage person with alcohol or sells a person who is of age with an alcolholic drink knowing that they intend to pass it to an underage person then I would be legally responsible and could be fined.

Is this an exercise in irony?

The BBC is reporting that the Respect Coalition candidate for Sparkbrook, Birmingham, in the recent elections is mounting a challenge to the results. She claims that some people were prevented from voting. Given the past behaviour of some of the parties in the Respect coalition in that same constituency the phrase "That's rich" comes to mind.

I live in that constituency. The Respect coalition campaigners (especially the JFK (Justice for Kashmir party, now renamed People's Justice party), a party who campaign mainly on the issue of handing the Kashmir region of India over to Pakistan) would routinely harrass voters outside the polling station (usually targeting white voters, the area is majority Asian) and follow them into the polling station, right up to the pollbooth, to continue to harrass them. Complaints to the officials in the polling station would result in a shrug from them and accusations of racism from the from the campaigners.

This year I avoided the harrassment by getting to the polling station before the campaigners were organised.

One more step towards gender equality

It's just been on the BBC breakfast news that 42% of bankrupts are now women. Appartently the root cause is that now women are more likley to take out debts in their own name (either because they are staying single or they are just doing it for themselves) rather than making/letting their husband taking on the responsibility for the debt.

They also talked about how women are more likely to take career breaks and to stay in a lower salary job because the employer has 'family friendly' policies. On a related note I remember at a recent UNISON education one day conference it was stated that women are far less likely to attempt to negotiate a higher salary or request training that will allow them to advance to higher paying jobs. One of the speakers (a woman) said that she had found that often female workers saw requesting/organising training was something that was done for/to them where as male workers saw it as something they do for themselves. I suspect that this has a lot to do with early life training and parental expectations (girls were expected to be pretty and play nicely whilst boys were expected to go out and have adventures).

Discipline in school found to improve exam results

A Birmingham head teacher inproved exam results 12 fold by introducing isolation rooms for disruptive pupils. Basically kids are 4 warnings then they get put in the rooms during the school day for upto 3 days. The school in questioin (Ninestyles) was always known for being very rough and a bit of a dumping ground for problem pupils. When I was in school at Langley (not far from Ninestyles), 1985-87, it was widely known (or at least believed) that a Ninestyles pupil had a far better chance of going to jail than to 6th form, let alone university.

The isolation rooms sound a lot like the pindown rooms that were briefly used in the 1980s before they were banned.

Keeping the policians honest and dealing with voter apathy

On one of the communities I frequent someone posted an entry asking for ideas on the perenial problem of how to keep politicians focused on representing their constituents and dealing with voter apathy.

Here's my response:

Unfortunately the only things I can think of are long term things and require the people to actually get off their arses and engage with the system.

• Hold you representive accountable. Go to surgeries/advice sessions, tell them what you need/want done and what you think they should be doing. Write to them using FaxyourMP.com or WriteToThem.com so that their responsiveness will be tracked and look at their past record using TheyWorkForYou.com. Find out if they have a blog or journal (for example John Hemming, the new MP for Yardley in Birmingham, has one on blogspot). Read it and comment as appropriate.
• Before the next election write them and tell them what you think of them and if you will be voting for or against them and why. Further, write to them at least once a year to tell them what you think of what they've done over the past year or what they did over a particular issue.
• Get active. Communicate with others in the area. Campaign on the issues important to you. Wave placards, distribute leaflets, join a union or pressure group, put up posters, write to the local newspaper &c.

I really believe that the voters need to engage with the political system and keep contact with their representatives. If enough of us ask questions and challenge the waffle and untruths then maybe we can keep our politicians honest. Also, maybe, if people make themselves aware of the local issues they can campaign on the things that are important, not just whatever the person with the megaphone is ranting about.
 
 

Blogging for business

After months of negative stories about companies firing bloggers for the contents of their online journal, BusinessWeek magazine are telling business to harness the power of blogging. Rather than seeing blogs as just a source of leaks and employee griping, companies should encourage positive blogging.

Blogs can be a useful as a grass roots tool for raising awareness. The frequent interlinking between blogs means that the readership of a comparatively minor blog can jump quickly as links to it spread and that blog posts frequently get Google PageRank scores that, so called, Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) can only dream of. Indeed the comment spamming that any of us that have had a popular blog for some time have seen often comes from SEOs trying to promote the sites they have been paid to 'optimize'.

The article suggests that businesses leverage blogs to promote their company. No doubt the marketing departments will quickly grasp on to this and start producing hundreds of blogs loaded with advertising. They always do miss the point like that. Who do you think invented spam? Yeah, that's right. Marketeers. It was the marketing department of a large law firm.

So, what will be sucessful corporate blogging?

I think somethin that shows a degree of sincerity. Not something loaded with adverts and product promotions, something containing real information about the company that doesn't look like it was passed through some marketing droid for spin and polish. Look at the the blogs of the likes of Jonathan Schwartz (of Sun Microsystems), Simon Phipps (also of Sun Microsystems), James Gosling (Sun Microsystems but the Java side of the business), GoogleBlog (Google, a digest from the personal blogs of many Google employees) or even Chris Pratley. All the blogs I've mentioned are from techie people because I'm a techie person and so I'm interested in what they have to say (I also read Wil Wheaton dot Net and many others (look to the right hand side of this page for somemore)). None could be considered advertising or marketing department driven, that's a big plus for me.. Pratley is just talking about the project he's working on. Schwartz talks about new things Sun is doing, similarly for the others talk about their work and the projects or products they're involved with. But in amongst the company stuff is the people interest stuff that puts a human face on the technology. That brings readers in and keeps them coming back.

Another thing that the article talks about is that it gives the company a chance to engage with the customers. Handled right this can be very useful, handled badly (i.e. by the marketing department) it can be a disaster. In her book The Popcorn Report US consumer/business writer Faith Popcorn talks about companies that have handled it right, and those who didn't. The key thing is what happens when things go wrong, when a poorly quality controlled product is shipped or a foodstuff gets contaminated. Companies that handled it badly let the marketing department go on a damage limitation exercise to hide the problem, minimise it, lie about it, say it was just a few isolarted cases. In the long term it hurt those companies badly. Those that handled it well engaged with the customer, admitted there was a problem and then explained how they were doing it. Sure those companies were hurt in the short term but they quickly got back with consumer confidence in them and their products higher than before.

I realize that I've been hard on marketing departments, but it's from years of experience of dealing with them. There's a marketing mindset and it's a bad mindset. It's a mindset that encourages people to place 'position' and spin over actually producing a product that people can use and will want to use.


 
 

Tories set to decimate post-16 basic skills training

The Tories have a statement in thier policy, a deceptively small one, that they are going to cut a large chunk of the funding to post-16 basic skills (e.g. literacy, IT &c) and 'soft skills' (e.g. assertiveness) training. If they get in and go ahead with this The the first effect will be that a large number of people involved in delivering such training will lose their jobs, the longer term effect will be a gradual widening of the educational gap in people over 16. Many people, especially those who went to school under the Thatcher/Major regimes, were failed by the educational system in this country, many now lack training to advance in their careers and the basic skills to get that training (and often their confidence has been so destroyed by the failure of their school education that it is difficult for them to even ask for the training). The long term effect of the Tory policy will be to further marginalise these people and deny them the opportunity to advance and improve their situation.

Political leanings

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Labour

Your actual outcome:

	Labour 29
Conservative -26
	Liberal Democrat 52
UK Independence Party 0
	Green 52

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.



You should vote: Green

The Green Party, which is of course strong on environmental issues, takes a strong position on welfare issues, but was firmly against the war in Iraq. Other key concerns are cannabis, where the party takes a liberal line, and foxhunting, which unsurprisingly the Greens are firmly against.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

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This is worrying, I'm a dedicated Labour supporter. I've only ever voted LibDem where Labour didn't have a chance but a LibDem vote could keep the Tories out.

Choice in healthcare and education

Once again the Tory party are pushing the idea of offering choice in healthcare and education. I don't have kids so the education side doesn't directly affect me, but lets look at the healthcare. Would you rather be told which hospital you were going into, knowing that they were the best able to treat whatever afflicted you, or have a choice of which MRSA ridden dump to be seen by a junior doctor who hasn't slept more than 3 hours in any given 24 since 8 weeks before their graduation from medical school.

I'll take quality over choice.

School Dinners

It has just been announced on the local BBC news that a school is to start serving vegetables with school dinners. In my own school days (1974-1987) it was pretty much impossible to avoid vegetables with your school dinner, even burger and chips came with a salad (which included, for some reason, a slice of orange).

MG Rover

It's just been on the news that should MG Rover go under the company that owns the site are looking to redevelop it, creating around 10,000 jobs (about 50/50 new jobs/relocated jobs). Apparently they have a track record of doing this and have revitalised other areas including former mining communities destroyed by the Tories.

I remember being on a course with some people from MG Rover last year. They were very critical of the management, feeling that there was a gap between what management thought was going on and what was actually going on.

It seemed like more than the normal workers criticism of management.

Getting a message through

I discovered today that at counts the returning officer has to show all spoiled ballots to the candidates or their agents. Therefore if you don't want to vote but would like to get a message to the candidates then if you spoil your ballot and write a message on it it will be seen by them.

Apparently some of the messages that get written are rather rude.

Personally I plan to vote for the candidate that will do me the most good.

Public Transport and Politics

John Hemming (LibDem), Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council, is proposing that the age limit for free travel on public transport be lowered to 60. He has indicated that it is a move to relieve congesation by getting people out of their cars and onto public transport.

I've heard a rumour that he's making another run for MP, perhaps this is part of his strategy?

Whilst I'm very much in favour of enouraging people to use public transport, I feel that the moeny should be spent on improving usability, safety and reliability for all passengers. Not just for those over 60. Plus free travel passes are only usable in off peak times, which are not the problem. It's when everyone is travelling to work/school or home at the end of the day (i.e. the peak times) that are the problem.

For example I have to travel into Birmingham city centre each week day for work. Fortunately I'm on flexitime so can arrive at work anytime between 07:00 and 10:00 and leave anytime between 16:00 and 19:00 (although it's far from unusual for me to have work later). If I leave the house at 09:00 then I generally get into work at around 09:30-09:40. If I leave the house at 08:00 then I generally get into work for about 09:25-09:35. To get the same travel time as at 09:00 (travelling in just after rush hour) I'd have to leave the house before 07:00, not being a morning person I choose the later option.

Similarly at the other end of the day, if I'm not out of the office by 16:15 then I may as well not bother to leave until 18:00 (unless I've got shopping to do). Fortunately that's not often a problem as my managers have perfected the art of dropping big packets of work on me at 15:55 as they head for the door.